In his 1996 State of the City speech delivered from the Jeremiah Burke High School, Mayor Thomas M. Menino clearly identified a gap between the City of Boston's technology infrastructure in the Boston Public Schools and existing technological developments in the business world. The technology deficits were grim, but the Mayor had a vision and he empowered others to make it a reality. The Boston Digital Bridge Foundation (BDBF) formed from this challenge.
Edward DeMore, a business entrepreneur, Special Advisor to the Director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and now CEO of BDBF joined forces with Steve Gag, Advisor to the Mayor on technology and now COO of BDBF. Together they enlisted a group of key individuals from a cross-section of government offices (the Mayor's Office, the City's financial office, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Boston Public Library and the BPS) and private sector companies such as 3Com, HiQ, Intel, and Microsoft, to create a comprehensive plan and began to implement it.
BDBF achieved its first goal by raising $225 million to network each of the Boston Public School's 135 school buildings and 26 public libraries; Boston thus became the nation's first fully networked urban school system. Within two years virtually all teachers in the BPS had received 50 hours of technology training and the student-to-computer ratio was reduced from 1:70 to 1:4. But the need to provide technology access, training, and valuable content and curriculum to 10,000 teachers and administrators, 57,000 students, and 40,000 families in Boston didn't end there.
In 1999, BDBF launched the Technology Goes Home program in six communities by partnering with 65 community organizations across the city, with the goal of training young people and their families to use technology. 2002 saw this intergenerational program branch into the Boston Public Schools as Technology Goes Home @ School. This program brings students and their families into the schools for technology training with BPS teachers. Originating in six schools with 40 participating families, TGH@School has since expanded to 50 schools and educated 1,000 families.
To date, the combination of the community-based TGH and TGH@School has trained a total of 3,500 families. Outcomes of the school-based program have shown to be broader and richer than the community-based program; delivery through the school system is more efficient, while the promise of growing relationships between BPS teachers and parents suggest great rewards in the school-home connection.
In the future, we seek to have Technology Goes Home programs available in every school throughout the BPS, so that every child and every family will have the option to receive technology education. With the Hub On Wheels citywide bike ride & festival, a fundraiser for the BDBF, positioned as our largest public event, we also intend to introduce bicycle education to the schools, in order to merge our interests both in cycling and in providing life opportunities through the BPS.
